Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium

Under the hood of BitTorrent

Bram Cohen
BitTorrent

About the talk:

BitTorrent has lately become a topic of widespread acadamic study. Most such study has viewed BitTorrent as a black box, with most its internal functionality taken for granted.
While such studies can generally confirm that BitTorrent performs well, they can do very little to indicate possible improvements. This talk will go into several of the nontrivial processes which happen in BitTorrent peers, and discuss continuing problems, possible new approaches, and quantitative methods of study.

About the speaker:

Bram Cohen is a non-academic college dropout with extensive experience working in the coding-intensive but non-rigorous world of software startups. His one significant academic claim to fame is being the author of BitTorrent, a project which he started, unemployeed, in summer 2001. While not coming from an academic background, BitTorrent represents an important innovation in the field of reliable systems, as well as being notable simple ubiquity.